Academy Soccer Presentation Day 2024

Saturday was the Academy Soccer annual presentation day held at the Warren and with both Holly and Brandon now at Academy it became an all day event for us with Holly there for 9:30am and then Brandon 2pm! It was really good to see that Holly's team have been recruiting and now they might even have enough players for moving up to 9-a-side nest season.

As usual the club had a BBQ, bar and loads of bouncy castles etc for the kids to mess around on. For Brandon's team it was a bit of a final farewell to one of the coaches, Tony, who is leaving as his two boys, Jack and Harrison, are planning to go to EJA next season. Then another team mate called Stan is leaving the team to play with his friends on another team and he fittingly got the Managers Player of the Year. After the presentation Tony took all the lads in to the bar and bought them all a beer which was a really nice gesture (not to mention the biggest smile of the day from Brandon when he heard beer!).

Holly receiving her 2023/24 trophy from coach Matt.

Holly's team are slowing growing, there was two missing today so it looks like they might have 10-11 players now.

Holly's team with her coaches. Paul on the left is moving on next season so someone new will be joining Matt to coach.

Holly signing on for next season with coach Matt.

It looks like next season she could be playing more of the Nr.9 role on her team.

Brandon's team all looking casual and listening intently as coach Chris gave each of them a short review of how they have performed over the year before getting down to the business of trophies.

Brandon receiving his 2023/24 trophy from coach Tony who is now leaving the team.

A farewell shake hand from Brandon.

After the presentation Brandon's team were trying to play football table tennis.

Much harder than it looks.

Good to see them all joining in and having fun.

Perhaps chugging the beer before playing didn't help though!

Instead of throwing the rings on the inflatable cacti, Brandon was throwing them at his team mates!

Boys being boys!

Meanwhile Holly enjoyed some inflatable basket ball.

Not sure she was supposed to stand inside the inflatable to take her shots!

Then amongst other bouncy castles she also enjoyed the bungee run.

With a bit of cheating using her hands she got to the end of the run, but then got pinged backwards!